The Bard’s Tale IV Announced

Today, inXile Entertainment announced at PAX South that they’re currently working on a new The Bard’s Tale game, titled simply The Bard’s Tale IV. Brian Fargo, the company’s CEO, broke the news on Twitter and confirmed that the title will be closer to the original dungeon crawler trilogy rather than the console-oriented action-RPG the company released in 2004:

It’s official.. And I’m very personally excited to be working on this. More details to follow.

Is this game will be closer to 2009 Bard’s Tale or to “classic” ones?

more like the classics.

GameInformer has some more information on the title’s design and the funding method. Unsurprisingly, inXile intends to return to the Kickstarter well again, though part of the game’s budget will come directly from the company’s pockets:

The game will feature modern day approaches to graphics, sound, and design while revisiting all the locales and classes that players love from the early installments in the series like the town of Skara Brae. The game will be a dungeon crawler through and through, but don’t expect to have to bust out the old-school tools. HUD elements will be kept to a minimum, there will be plenty of puzzles, and immersion will be the focus.

“I don’t think in this day and age we can make you break out the graph paper,” says Fargo. “We might have a hardcore mode for that.”

There will be a crowdfunding push for The Bard’s Tale 4, as well as funding coming from InXile.

The Bard’s Tale seems like a really natural fit for the company, so I’m not surprised to see this announcement, though I have to admit I didn’t expect it quite so soon. As always, we’ll keep you updated with more details on this project as soon as they are available.